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Why is it ok for the authorities to censor a film and release a cut version because they deem the original too much or that it may cause offence? Why do we accept this censorship in cinema? Especially when the film in question is still passed as an 18 after the cuts have been made.

If the next Jonathan Franzen book had pages cut out by the authorities before it made it to Waterstones would people just accept that or would there be complaints?

despite that a magic looking glass called democrasy, has been woven so that a majority of people (or enough at least), can believe that their best interests are being served (tempered by a fair deal for others as well ((although thy couldnt want to call it anything like socialism or communism))).
When, in actual fact, the underlying rule is still 'MIGHT IS RIGHT'
the only times that this underlying fact can be challenged is when the magic spell of weaving might be compromised

it's mostly been 'disablist' slurs from American tween sitcoms and scenes of animals in extreme distress.

If you want to go all dystopian lizard men global conspiracy on the effects of film, literature, media and all that sort of stuff (and I sometimes do), it's what we see and not what is 'censored' out that is the real concern.

nowadays very little is censored and that's why the C in BBFC is now Clasfication and not Censorship.

On my film course (and this was 10 years ago) why had a guy from bbfc come in and show us stuff that had been cut and explain why. The main things are things that people might copy when drunk on a friday night that could lead to severe injury (eg extreme Jackass kind of stuff). One bit was some documentry about extreme bsdm and a guy having large metal balls put up his arse - the problem was that there was not a clear way they could be retrived. So if they had string - fine no strings - cut.

The other big no no is sexualised violence and gratuatous shots of penertration. Oh and facials. (This is for mainstream film not R18 stuff of course)